‘I’m very much a hands-on artist’ … Whiteread. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

On a morning in late May, wearing hard hats and high-vis jackets, Rachel Whiteread and I climb up flights of aluminium ladders through three levels of scaffolding to inspect the progress of her latest work: a frieze on the facade of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in east London. Whiteread ascends as swiftly as a seasoned sailor on a ship's rigging, the journey now a familiar one, although we go up on a rare day when rainwater on the metal steps hasn't been a worry.

"We hadn't realised we'd be doing this in the monsoon period," she says, "so it's taken longer than we thought." Her first experience of this perspective, she explains, was "from a cherrypicker on one of the coldest days of last year, in snow and blizzards. But I've lived and worked in this area for 25 years, so I know the landscape very well."

This is the second time in her career that Whiteread has filled an accidental artistic absence: for the fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, she created a double-take by casting a resin replica of the plinth itself. On the face of the Whitechapel, which has carried a bald patch since the original design by Walter Crane in 1901 was judged too expensive, she has extended a tree motif already on the frontage and created a pattern of gilded leaves. On the platforms, her assistants are handling fragile strips of gold leaf, like glowing Post-it notes; these have been going up and down in value as Whiteread and her team have worked through these tense economic months.

She was drawn to gold while taking photographs from the roof of St Paul's cathedral. "I wanted to put something there that wasn't bling, but sort of lit up the building. And, looking out across the city from that height, I was struck by the sun alighting on a streak of gold in a miserable part of London and going ping." To work on the frieze, which will be unveiled tomorrow, she built a plywood model of the Whitechapel facade. "Luckily, I've got quite a tall studio."

Whiteread is best known for bringing to life the insides of buildings – in Ghost (1990) and House (1993), which made solid casts of the interior spaces between walls. Did the Whitechapel put a proviso in her contract that she couldn't remove the gallery and display its interior on the facade? "Yes, exactly," she laughs. "It was always clear that there was never going to be anything like that." Even so, in deference to what she recognises is "sort of my signature", the frontage contains four reliefs cast from the concave gap between the glass and frames of the gallery windows – another of Whiteread's explorations of what she calls "negative space"; these began when, as a young artist, she had the thought of "mummifying the air" in a room. She has also used the technique in her "nameless library" Holocaust memorial in Vienna, an impression of a room of books with their blank pages facing outwards.

Back at ground level, we talk at a varnished table in a Whitechapel meeting room, a fitting symbol for the numerous bureacratic discussions, involving the gallery, the local council and English Heritage, in which the artist has had to take part. "An enormous number of meetings," sighs Whiteread. "Absolutely everyone had a say. It took me five years to put up the memorial in Vienna because of the same sort of process. But you can't make a good piece of public art by consensus; it's just not possible. So I really had to stick my heels in." Does she ever lose her temper? "Yes. Yes, I do, a few times."

While Whiteread has never become a public figure in the manner of contemporaries such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, her projects have become the subject of fierce public debate, both in Vienna and in London: House won her the Turner prize in 1993, but was the subject of some local hostility; some found her fourth plinth commission repetitious. Has she had to become immune to criticism?

"I'm not thick-skinned at all, which is why I don't do very many of them. I find it really difficult. I'm learning to get a thicker skin. House nearly killed me; the Vienna memorial nearly killed me. The Whitechapel hasn't been quite as bad, but it's really hard. There are a lot of voices, and I try to think that you just have to let it go. But everything I make is a part of me. I don't hand it over to an engineer to make; I'm very much a hands-on artist. You mention Tracey and Damien and they've worked very hard – this isn't a criticism of them because it's what they want to do – at making their personalities and their lives very much a part of it. I've worked very hard at a quieter approach. A lot of the work has been temporary. Probably the most powerful thing about House is that it doesn't exist any more."

This surprises me because even I get intermittently upset at the absence of House, which was demolished in 1994; surely the artist must? "Well, yes, I do get upset. And I'm incredibly proud of making it. The Tate buying Carl Andre's bricks and then House were the two most controversial things to happen in art in 20 years. Now people can't get enough of it; the papers can't get enough of culture and it's just rammed down everyone's throat. And actually I think to the detriment of culture, because it belittles it. Everyone can have a say, but not everyone's an expert, not everyone's an art critic. It's become far too easy to have a pop at modern art."

She again distances herself from contemporaries. "Damien's been very savvy, Tracey's been very savvy, Grayson Perry's been very savvy at becoming almost cultural commentators themselves. And that's interesting in itself, but it's a very different thing from what I do."

Is she still close to the other YBAs? Whiteread exhibited alongside Hirst, Emin and others at the Royal Academy's landmark Sensation show in 1997. "Er, yes. I used to be a very good friend of Damien's, don't see him so much now. I'm a friend of Tracey. Grayson and I had studios together, where the Olympic stadium is now. But I have always been a bit of a loner within the YBAs. I'm not a very good joiner-in, not very good at staying under the umbrella."

Is she competitive? "No, I don't think so, not in the obvious way. What really annoys me is when people make shit work and it's still out there and it's emperor's new clothes, and people lose their critical distinction." Whiteread declines to name names, so I ask if she would ever tell an artist friend that their latest work was shit. "Erm. Ur. Ah, now there's a question …" A five-second pause. "Sometimes I find a way of telling them that I don't necessarily say it myself. I might try to pass it through someone else. Look: anyone who makes art over a long period has to know when they are making good art and bad art. But money and fame are very addictive."

Are there pages in her own career catalogue that she now flicks quickly past? "There are a few things that I believed in at the time, not so much now. But I don't have an enormous output. I try to avoid that risk."

Whiteread is sometimes presented as something of a feminist pioneer, because she was the first woman to win the Turner prize. But the artist has always deflected such a reading; her mother was an artist, she says, and so she was never conscious of what we might call a ceramic ceiling.

Does the art world have gender equality now? She laughs before answering. "Well, I think the answer to that question is probably no. Although, saying that, I've always been very comfortable with my position in the art world. An American artist friend a few years ago said: 'Do you know, you single-handedly make the largest pieces a woman artist has ever made?' And I hadn't thought of that before. That does make me proud."

I mention that the sculptor Barbara Hepworth once said something similar about people expecting small works from women. "Yes, but mine are much bigger than hers!" A long burst of laughter. "Oh, God, I sound like one of those men. OK, maybe I am competitive."

Critics have always read death into Whiteread's work, even before it became most explicit in the Vienna Holocaust sculpture. Was she one of those children with a precocious awareness of mortality? "Erm. I had a pet sparrow who died and stayed under my bed for three months in a cardboard box. My mum kept saying: 'What's that awful smell?' But it was just that I was sad and didn't want to bury it. I don't think I've had an unhealthy interest in death – it's just something I've always been interested in. A lot of my work isn't intellectually based, it's emotionally based and I think that's where that comes from."

It strikes me that, like musicians and actors who call themselves Kid or Junior, being a YBA becomes complicated as the birthdays accumulate. In middle age, should they become MABAs or, later, OBAs? "I don't think the label will ever change. We've discussed for a long time now setting up an old people's home we'll all go into." And presumably, at some point in the 2040s or so, there will be pressure for a reunion group show at the Royal Academy, a sort of Sanatogen Sensation? "Yes. I think that's almost bound to happen. But hopefully, by then, there'll be a rush of new young blood – out storming the world."

About this article

Rachel Whiteread: 'I'm not a joiner-in'

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 13.26 EDT on Tuesday 12 June 2012.
A version appeared on p16 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Tuesday 12 June 2012.
It was last modified at 23.20 EDT on Tuesday 3 June 2014.
It was first published at 13.00 EDT on Tuesday 12 June 2012.